The personal blog of Atticus and Holdon.

Tag Archives: Bible

My wife is Catholic. She was born and raised in church. She finds comfort in the community, the family bond, and the idea that God is actively involved in her life – keeping her safe. She enjoys the traditions, loves Christmas time, uses prayer as a form of meditation when life is tough. She’s also married to a non-believer. Me.

My wife is aware of my agnosticism and honestly she doesn’t like it. She can’t relate to my way of thinking. She says I’m all logic and reason with no emotion. Of course that is partially true, but on the same token I fail to understand why she is pure emotion. In a way we balance each other out nicely. I remind her to think it through while she reminds me to have a heart. I don’t think this dynamic is unusual in a relationship.

Discussions on Religion

Sometimes we have brief discussions about religion, but I’m a bully. My thoughts are logical and well thought out – I have data points and examples to prove my thesis. My wife relies heavily on the emotional aspect, faith, and why religion just “feels” right. We quickly realize we aren’t speaking one another’s language and aren’t likely to convince the other of anything.

I don’t want my wife to be Atheist though. There’s something about her conviction that I really love. If religion is where she finds her source of strength and balance who am I to take that away. She’s peaceful and doesn’t use religion as a weapon – overall it’s a positive thing in her life. I suppose it’s no different than the way I use my own thoughts and moments of meditation to get through life.

Finding Happiness with Difference

Sometime people wonder how a believer and a non-believer can live a happy life together. The two ways of thinking seem almost diametrically opposed to one another. They’re not.

We still share the same morals. In principal I believe that many of the moral lesson taught by Jesus were good ones – just as I believe the lesson taught by the Buddha or Gandhi are good. So often instead of focusing on our difference – I focus on what works for us.

Good and Bad on Both Sides

While I am basically against the brainwash of organized religion I do not deny that there are good and bad people on both sides of the religious spectrum. The Priest that married my wife and I is one of the most wonderful people I have ever met. He is thoughtful, educated, and everything a man of the cloth should be. Carl Sagan, an Atheist, was by all accounts also a great man. I’ll bet if the two of them met they would have a lovely conversation.

I think my overall point, from a non-religious perspective, is that life is more about who you are as a person than what your particular beliefs are. Be a good person – religious or not religious. That is how my wife and I treat our relationship (though we’ve never officially said that). My wife is a wonderful, caring, beautiful person – much better than me. I try to be a man of integrity who puts his family first – treat people with respect. We both WANT to be good people, that’s an important step.

What about the Kids?

How will I raise my kids? I’ll raise my kids with truth and without bias. I’ll teach my children what the historians say, I’ll teach them to about the world’s religions, and a variety of viewpoints. My wife will undoubtedly teach them about Christianity, the tradition, the love, and the comfort of religion. Both are important.

I have complete trust in my future children’s ability to choose what life suits them best – without my wife or I forcing them into anything. What is important to me isn’t if my children are Christian’s or Atheists, but rather if they are good people.

Giving my children the ability to think for themselves is the greatest gift a father can give. Along with that comes the trust that my future children can make decisions for themselves. Love, support, trust, and freedom – that is what my children will receive. I don’t think anyone can ask much more than that from their parents.

There are undeniable correlations from religion to religion. For example, almost all religions have a flood story. In the story the creator flooded the earth because of our bad behavior, but a few chosen were spared and left to repopulate the earth. This theme can be found across the Globe from the Mayans, the Greeks, and of course in Christianity.

Some might argue these correlations are evidence of the truth of the story. Obviously the flood happened because sparse populations all across the globe are talking about it. Right?

Maybe there is some truth to that, but I think a more likely scenario is that over time these legends and stories have been borrowed and integrated. It’s important to remember that much of religion and culture is based on oral tradition – and if you’ve ever played the telephone game (where you pass a sentence around a group of people until it gets back to the original person and laugh at how much it has changed) you know that ideas and “truth” can change drastically in a short period of time.

Historicity of Jesus

One thing a lot of people fail to realize is that the history and story of Jesus was not written down until almost 100 years after his life and death. Most of these stories (some compiled in the bible) come from corespondents and letters written by Christians. (i.e., Letters of Paul).

Some people have the mis-understanding that the Paul, John, Matthew, etc. from the books of the bible are eye witnesses – Jesus’s disciples. This is just not accurate. No Priest or Pastor would disagree with me there. So ask yourself: how much of the story was changed, exaggerated, mis-remembered, and manipulated after 100 years of oral tradition?

Edit: The information to follow is highly disputed and for the most part subject to interpretation. After you watch the video give this website a once over and decide how serious to take it.

In general, describing Jesus goes something like this:

1. Born of a Virgin
2. Performed Miracles
3. Known as the light, the truth, God’s Son, etc.
4. 12 disciples
5. December 25th: Star of Bethlehem, followed by three kings on his birth night
6. Sacrificed himself for the sins of the people
7. Resurrected after 3 days

It turns out this story, like the flood story, is pretty common. See the video below.

If you choose not to believe in evolution, fine. The theory isn’t perfect and there are a few scientific alternatives to our arrival on this earth as a species.

Hell, you can even believe God put all of this into action. Believe that God created these processes that eventually and inevitably lead to our very existence. You can believe in big-foot, the tooth fairy, monsters, the paranormal, and whatever else you want too, but PLEASE can we give up this young earth creationistbullshit?

Christian’s are the only ones clinging to this idea too (not all of them, even Catholics are laughing). Why? Because apparently you can trace the linage from Adam to present day at about 6000-10000 years. Taking the bible, a book whose stories existed as oral tradition for 100s of years, as historical fact is your first problem, but I won’t go there. The real question is how are you ignoring all the scientific evidence to the contrary?

Dinosaurs

One evening when my wife was out to dinner with and old high school friends, catching up, the friend brought up the young Earth theory. She said:

“Well, the bible talks about dinosaurs. It mentions behemoth, which is the description of a dinosaur…and you can’t refute the bible.”

No. I’m not fucking joking. This individual is responsible for another human life and is attempting to reconcile the existence of dinosaurs to a fucking verse in the bible. If God exists he is as disappointed as I am.

If Dinosaurs existed during the time of man humans would have worshiped them. We wouldn’t have drawn sketches of buffalo or lions on the side of caves and pottery, there would be monuments dedicated to T-Rex! Who the fuck gives a shit about a puny antelope when there are goddam brontosaurus roaming around!

I would rather believe fucking ancient alien theory than this shit.

Brainwash

Let me get serious for a second because I know a thing or two about religious brainwash. Why? Because it almost happened to me.

I was raised to believe that the bible is the literal word of God and when you are told to believe a certain thing your entire life the bullshit isn’t always obvious. For the first 12 years of my life I’m not sure I realized there were other religions (or lack there of) at all.

When all of the people you love and respect teach you the same thing, drill it into your head, it seems real. Of course they never bring up the holes in their arguments – no one EVER teaches you about that – not until your brain is so full of mush someone could show you a monkey transform into a human and you would deny seeing it.

Anyways – that’s pretty much how I grew up. Not forced to believe, not abused, just never shown anything different. So by high school I was doing my very best to believe, but I always had problems.

Looking back I could never fully commit myself to a belief in the God I was taught about. I tried though – and I was a hard worker so I did my studies. I read every argument, searched for videos, read articles.

By the time college came around I bumped into an evangelist who almost sucked me in. I might have been a fucking campus street preacher – one of those annoying bastards. That not happening may be proof there is a God after all.

Luckily at the same time I was also taking my first religion class. The women teaching it was actually a Christian. The class blew my mind. I had no idea how the bible was put together. I had no idea so many religions were so much older than Christianity. By the end of the class I wanted more – I eventually earned my minor in religion, but that was only enough to make me realize I know exactly nothing about it.

So here I am now – a guy saved from religion – by studying religion. I find that ironic.

Our destiny is decided. What we want doesn’t matter. Whether we follow the path of righteousness and enter heaven or follow a path of evil and find hell awaiting us after death is all predetermined. Hell, whether we choose Frosted Flakes or Lucky Charms for breakfast tomorrow morning has already been decided too. Predestination – one of the illogical pillars of Calvinism that I despise.

Calvinism is even illogical from a religious perspective. Double predestination assumes not only does God choose a few elite persons (at random?) to go to heaven, but that the rest of us poor saps are going to hell, forever, and there’s nothing we can do about it. What kind of loving creator creates something to ultimately be tortured for eternity? If we go by that logic, assuming there is no such thing as free will, then not only is God himself responsible for sin and evil, but also for our eternal damnation. Surely this can’t be the case.

I mean seriously. Does it at all seem logical for an all loving, all just, creator to build something, specifically programmed to behave a certain way – then arbitrarily choose most of them to spend the rest of time in pain and agony. When you created them to be exactly as they are! Free will seems infinity more logical and just.

The Dangers of Calvinism

The Calvinist way of thinking is a dangerous one. It’s essentially a hopeless one. Why do anything when you are doomed to hell or blessed with heaven by no actions of your own? (Although I’m sure all people who are actually Calvinist believe they are part of the elect selected by God to go to Heaven. How convenient.) If you do not feel the call of God, you are going to hell anyways, so why live? Calvinism essentially leads to an overall environment of moral nihilism.

In fact, it only makes sense that people who believe they are going to heaven are Calvinist. Is anyone a Calvinist who actually believes they are doomed to Hell? What a bunch of elitist pricks.

The Undeniable Logic of Free Will

If you are a Christian you MUST believe in free will. If not, what point was it for Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of all mankind? The fate of the people have already been decided. By the Calvinist’s logic: God decided in advance who goes to heaven or hell, then sent himself to earth to die on the cross for sinners, sinners who he had already decided were going to heaven or hell anyways. Right?

This is all Bullshit Anyways

Look folks, if we are going to start cherry picking versus from the Bible to support our way of thinking we may as well consider ourselves screwed anyways. Calvanist pull versus like “…also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will…” to demonstrate clear references to predestination.

Alright, fine. I’ll pull this one “Yet she increased her prostitution, remembering the days of her youth when she engaged in prostitution in the land of Egypt. 23:20 She lusted after their genitals – as large as those of donkeys,and their seminal emission was as strong as that of stallions. This is how you assessedthe obscene conduct of your youth, when the Egyptians fondledyour nipples and squeezedyour young breasts.” (Ezekiel 23:19-20) The only thing I’m wondering is – are my genitals supposed to be “as large as those of donkeys” or am I missing something? Wow.

In the End

If you are religious and believe in God – use a little common sense. The Bible isn’t literal and once we understand that – Calvinism starts falling apart. If you aren’t religious – well, you know.

Yesterday I posted about the correlation between people living in cities, having higher income, and more education being more liberal. Today I want to add into the equation the factors of age and religion. Again, I selected the states of Florida, Georgia, and Kansas at random to inspect the data. See below for the results and scroll to the end for the conclusion.

Georgia

Georgia by percent of population over 64

Georgia by religious practitioners

Florida

Florida by percent of population over 64

Kansas

Kansas by percent of population over 64

Kansas by religious practitioners

Conclusion

As we can see from the data above and posted yesterday the major factors effecting political leaning are income, age, proximity to major cities (jobs), and education. Religion, while it appears to have some impact, is not as critical as expected.

Religion:
In Florida and Georgia religion appears to have little to moderate correlation to political leaning. There are less and more religious counties all over each state. However, in Kansas we see a more direct correlation. Near the city of Topeka, a more liberal area, there are less religious practitioners. We can conclude then, if anything, the more religious an area is the more conservative and the less religious the more liberal – in general. (Also the more religious the less educated and poorer an area.)

More stuff to examine
I think the next step would be to examine what are the determining factors when it comes to voting. Are people voting based on social issues of fiscal issues? Do people self-identify as progressive or conservative? How are people voting if there is a conflict between their fiscal beliefs and social beliefs? What role are independents, libertarians, and members of minority parties playing?

For now, it seems we can safely assume that the individuals with higher income, are below the age of retirement, have a college degree, and live in close proximity to cities are generally more liberal than their older, less educated, lower income counterparts.

I hate to keep bombarding the loyal readers of this blog with garbage from Facebook, but wow does it give me a lot of good material to complain about – which is also the sole factor preventing me from deleting my account and all of these good ole’ boys right along with it.

In any case, below is a lovely conversation between a village idiot I went to high school with and happily a few people that seem like they might actually have a brain in their head.

Yes, this is life in the South at times. There are some good guys, some bad guys, and a lot of idiots. Enjoy shaking your head and wondering to yourself if the world is doomed after all. Just in case you were wondering – no I didn’t comment.